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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

Sec. Agricultural and Food Economics

Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1647632

Rural Digitization and the Urban-Rural Income Gap: A Perspective of Factor Flow

Provisionally accepted
Xiaoai  WenXiaoai Wen1Yiran  LiYiran Li1Minxi  ZhouMinxi Zhou1Fengcun  FengFengcun Feng2*Pingping  WangPingping Wang1*
  • 1China Agricultural University, Beijing, China
  • 2Zhejiang A and F University, Hangzhou, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

The urban–rural income gap is a key indicator of balanced economic development and directly influences social equity and harmony. In recent years, the rapid development of digital technologies and the promotion of rural digitization have profoundly reshaped the development of rural areas and provided new ideas for resolving income disparities between urban and rural residents. This study uses panel data from counties in China between 2018 and 2021 and a two-way fixed effects model to empirically test the impact of rural digitization on the urban–rural income gap and determine the underlying mechanism. The findings suggest that rural digitization effectively reduces the urban–rural income gap, with more pronounced effects in southern regions, eastern regions, central regions and areas with better agricultural development. Mechanistically, rural digitization narrows the income gap mainly by promoting technological innovation. Rural digitization does not cause more capital to flow into rural areas. Further spatial econometric analysis indicates that the role of rural digitization in narrowing the urban-rural income gap has a significant spatial spillover effect, and this spillover is more likely to occur between counties with similar levels of economic development.

Keywords: Rural digitization, urban-rural income gap, Factor flow, China JEL: J23 O15 P25, Economics

Received: 16 Jun 2025; Accepted: 04 Aug 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Wen, Li, Zhou, Feng and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence:
Fengcun Feng, Zhejiang A and F University, Hangzhou, China
Pingping Wang, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China

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